by Karen Healey
That it was beside mine wasn’t pure coincidence.
“You look much better conscious,” Hanad observed.
Tegan shrugged, lowering herself carefully into the chair. “Doesn’t everyone?”
“Ah, but you are the Snow White. The Sleeping Beauty.” He pronounced the name with almost clownish gusto, but his eyes were sharp.
“Those are just fairy tales. I’m a real girl. I mutter and drool and wriggle in my sleep. Ask Abdi.”
Oh, that wasn’t fair. The heat of my blush swept over me from throat to hairline, and I forked up more food to avoid Hanad’s inquisitive glance. Technically, the whole world knew we’d slept together—emphasis on the slept, and she did drool—but it was more real when these tough men were having trouble concealing their amusement.
“I understand that I should thank you for saving my life.”
Thulani said something in Portuguese that made Ashenafi stifle a laugh, but Hanad returned her direct gaze. “Thanks are unnecessary. A bank transfer is required.”
“Joph will pay,” Bethari said quickly. “As soon as we’re back together.”
Hanad spread his hands in generous agreement. “Until she does, we have this wonderful meal, and the good doctor was telling us a story about the not-so-living dead. You say you saw this test case, Miss Tegan?”
“Yes. Just after I woke up. I didn’t believe Marie when she told me I’d been dead for so long. When I tried to escape I checked out one of the institution rooms. There was a man on the bed.”
“Nicolas Fisher,” Marie said. “He had a hole in his heart that no one had diagnosed. He was only twenty-six when he died.”
“He looked younger.”
“He was in very good condition,” Marie said sadly. “We all thought he was an excellent test case.”
“But he didn’t really come back to life,” Tegan said.
“That would be a matter for the philosophers,” Marie told her. “Or possibly the priests. As a mere medical professional, I can tell you Mr. Fisher showed no cognitive function, whereas you were—”
“A perfect guinea pig?”
“Something like that, yes. Although if I’d been allowed to test my process on guinea pigs, this might never have happened.”
“No animal testing?” Tegan asked, blinking.
“Of course not,” Bethari said, sounding faintly shocked.
“You know, every time I think I’m getting used to the future…” Tegan waved her hand. “Sorry, Marie. Go on?”
Marie nodded. “There’s… a fallow period, to use an agricultural metaphor. After the revival itself takes place and we repair whatever caused the patient to opt for cryonics in the first place, the protocol is to keep patients in a medical coma for at least six weeks. We work on muscle regrowth, fix any nonfatal problems—oh, lots of things. And while that’s happening, the brain also recovers and adjusts. Or in Mr. Fisher’s case, doesn’t. I now believe that would be true of all adults.”
Marie pushed her plate away. “I was… reluctant to continue my work after capture. Eventually SADU gained my compliance, if not my goodwill. They gave me a limited team to assist and brought me many more patients. Most of them were like Tegan, officially donated to science. Others were patients who their families had volunteered for the program, knowing that they wouldn’t be able to pay for their preservation any longer. They took the chance that I could help them.” She looked at her hands. Long, sensitive fingers. Surgeon’s hands.
Tegan put her own hand over Marie’s and squeezed. Marie smiled at her, a trembling, fragile quaver. “I tried,” she said. “Not for SADU. I tried for the people they gave me to revive, because they were my patients, however they came into my hands. I refined the revival technique. I concentrated on the fallow period. I attempted to insist on the best possible care.”
“But it didn’t work,” Hanad said.
“No,” Marie said. “On most of them, it didn’t work. There was either complete brain death, or a few remnants of involuntary activity, but no cognitive function. No response to stimulus.”
Hanad frowned. “Didn’t they notice that it was just the young people who lived?”
“Oh, but some of them died, too. Improper preservation, undiagnosed disorders we couldn’t fix… at least one died because of an error I made in the microvesselectomy. I was so tired. Always working. And the team they gave me were… well, few reputable professionals would work for SADU. They weren’t up to my usual standards of assistants.”
“But you said they have your notes,” I said.
“Yes. The pattern is there. Eventually they’ll see it. Maybe their doctors already have and are trying to find a solution, fix the problem without telling anyone else. But I don’t think the president would have hosted that conference if he were aware of the flaw; the people in charge must not know yet.”
Tegan was frowning. “So the revival process works for, what, under-eighteens?”
“Not… quite. Brain function doesn’t respect political lines or social conventions concerning adulthood. The human brain takes some time to fully mature, peaking in the mid-twenties. It varies a little, depending on the individual’s biology. Before that point, the brain is… let’s say, very elastic. An immature brain that retains that elasticity is better able to reroute around the microdamage that occurs during cryorevival. The damage still exists, but the brain can adapt to it.”
Tegan put a hand to her head. “I have damage in my brain?”
“Tiny holes,” Marie said reassuringly. “Very, very small.”
“That’s not as comforting as you think it is!”
“All those refugees,” I said. “Everyone was most horrified about the children, but it’s their parents we should have been mourning.”
That shut everyone up. I don’t know what they were thinking, but I was seeing the ranks of cryocontainers, the faces of the people who had gone into them hoping for something better, and would never come out again.
“Not to mention those people who have friends and family members in cryonic suspension, waiting for cures for what was killing them,” Marie said at last. “Cryonics has been practiced since before Tegan’s time. Nearly every suspension has been of a sick or recently dead adult, waiting for a life that was supposed to be one day viable.”
“And you’re sure it’ll never work?” I asked. “With a different solution, a different technique?”
Marie shook her head. “It’s the hardware that’s the problem, not the software. We’d have to remake the adult brain. And while that might be possible in a few hundred years, it’s presently far out of our reach. Frankly, by the time we could manage that, we’d be better off opting for an electrical consciousness upload anyway. Immortality, in a global network or an android body.”
Zaneisha frowned. “Well, that’s creepy,” Tegan said.
It made sense that they, who lived so much in their bodies, would find the idea off-putting, but I was intrigued. What kind of music could you make, if you had a vastly expanded mind and total conscious control?
Tegan was gnawing on her lip. “So, obviously, we have to tell people before anyone else gets frozen. We can get in touch with the media.”
“I’ve got a few contacts we could approach,” Bethari said. “If we start with a preliminary report that teases a few facts—”
“Slow down,” I said. “We have to think about this.”
Tegan lifted her chin. “Why do we—”
“Because we do,” I said, hardly aware of her startled look. Observe. Consider. Empathize. “Tegan, we tell the world, and then what happens?”
“People stop opting for cryonics. And the Ark Project is scrap,” Marie said matter-of-factly.
“And this government probably gets ejected,” Tegan said, lips curving. “Gotta say, I’m looking forward to that. I mean, I wish they’d been brought down for being torturous scumbags, but I’ll take a massive failure of their flagship project instead.”
“And what happens to those who
have already been frozen?” I asked.
“Burial or cremation or… whatever their belief systems require, I imagine,” Marie said. “Some will doubtless opt to keep their family members preserved, hoping that I’m wrong. Those still under the age of brain maturity can continue in a cryonic state until cures are found for their conditions.”
“You think they’re going to bury the refugees?” I asked pointedly. “The ones who were frozen for being an illegal drain on Australia’s resources?”
Hanad snorted.
“And then there are the refugee kids, the ones who can be revived,” I continued remorselessly. “If the Ark Project isn’t going ahead, will they bring them back to life? Marie, just how expensive is your revival process?”
Marie’s lips parted in dismay. “Very,” she said. “Obviously, with greater volume it becomes less expensive per case….”
“But the volume goes down sharply if you exclude everyone in their midtwenties and above, so it’s going to cost a lot.” I barely waited for her confirming nod. “Do we really expect the government—whichever government—to bring them back at great cost, and then what? Put them in the camps to be a continuing expense? No. They won’t do that. They’ll make noises about doing it one day, when circumstances have changed, when the money’s there. But they won’t go through with it.”
Bethari was staring at me. “Aren’t you upset?”
I blinked at her. “Yes.” My disgust and rage were snarling under my skin, expanding so that I thought I might explode from the pressure.
“But you sound so…”
“This is how Abdi does upset,” Tegan said. “He sounds perfectly rational and calm while he lays out all the terrible things that can happen, and underneath, he’s exploding.”
I should have felt uncomfortable that I was so predictable to her, but instead I was, for a moment, purely glad that someone understood me that well.
Bethari was looking at me, head tilted as if I were an interesting new program with unusual code.
“So the problem with raising the refugee children is expense,” Hanad said, ignoring the byplay. “The expense of revival, the continued expense of preservation.”
“Yes,” I said.
“So why would the government not cut their expenses for good and just turn the power off?” he asked.
I stared at him, stunned. “No,” I said. “No, they wouldn’t do that. It would be mass murder.” Murder of children sleeping in boxes the government had pressed their parents into accepting for them, no less.
“They’re slavers already,” he said practically. “If they don’t see these children as people worth caring about, why not cut their losses?”
“No one would stand for it,” Tegan said. “I mean, I know Australia doesn’t have the best track record, but the government couldn’t do that and get away with it.” She looked uncertainly at me. “Right?”
Her doubt was contagious. “I don’t…”
“What if they could get away with it, by saying it was someone else?” Bethari asked. Her eyes were bright with tears. “What if they could blame simultaneous blackouts on the terrorists who had already used their deadly EMP device?”
“Oh,” I said, the possibilities abruptly clear. “It would be especially easy to blame Save Tegan if the government had any evidence of Lat’s plan to attack the president. Which they do, because I gave it to them.”
“Can we get a warning to Lat?” Tegan asked, and I realized that she didn’t know.
I took a deep breath. “Lat’s dead,” I said, as gently as I could. “He came to help you, Tegan.” No need to mention just what form he’d wanted that help to take, not yet. “But Diane came, too. She killed him.”
Tegan made a strangled, squeaking noise and pressed her hands over her mouth. Her eyes went round and enormous, like two dark moons.
“I’m sorry,” I added, and discovered it was true. I hadn’t liked Lat. In fact, I’d wanted him to die more times than I could count. But the reality of his death was so horrible that it had cured me of that impulse. Now the only person I wanted to die was Diane. Other than that, I was sick of death—the mess of it, the horror of life and possibility for change forever extinguished in those shattering moments. And I hated seeing Tegan hurt.
“What are we going to do?” Bethari asked. Her voice was shaky. “We have to do something.”
“I think we have to get the truth out,” Marie said. “Like Tegan did, before. A public ’cast.”
“How much good did that really do?” I was thinking it, but it was Tegan who said it. With the initial shock over, her face had gone grim. Under the table, I groped for her hand with mine and felt the small, rough palm squeeze back with desperate strength. She sighed. “I thought that when we first told people about the Ark Project that something would happen. It looked like things were happening.”
“You raised awareness,” Marie said.
“I didn’t get what I wanted, Marie. I wanted the government to put a halt to the indentured labor part of the Ark Project, and to stop treating refugees like livestock that have inconveniently wandered over from the next pasture.”
“I started smuggling because I wanted the medicine patent restrictions lifted,” I said. “That’s why I told Tegan to put it in her ’cast. And that didn’t happen, either.”
“No. We got imprisoned, tortured—people slapped my name on their own political movements without any way to check if I’d be okay with what they said and did. So maybe telling people what’s going on straight away isn’t our best bet.”
“But we have to tell the world,” Marie said. “There are people effectively committing suicide right now. People who gave money to the Ark Project in exchange for being cryonically preserved expect to wake up again, and they never will. Don’t you care about them?”
Tegan’s eyes met mine, and we had a moment of perfect accord. I could see her remembering the sponsors who had crowded around us, watching us sing and make music, listening to our rehearsed speeches. Were we worried that some of the richest people in those rooms had happily funded slave labor and gotten themselves frozen, ready to enjoy a new world where others would labor for their benefit? Did we care about them?
Did I care about Ruby Simons, who had tried to buy me for a night?
“Not really,” I said.
“Screw them,” Tegan agreed.
“You can’t mean that,” Bethari said. Her voice was flat and cold. “I never thought I’d hear you two dismiss human life.”
“You weren’t where we were, Bethi,” Tegan said. She sounded stung.
“They’re slavers!” I said, over top of her.
“But they don’t know they’re slavers,” Bethari pointed out. She flushed when I blinked at her. “Well, some of them might know, and just don’t care. But a lot of those people believe what the government’s been telling them. They really do think the refugees are happy to go; they sincerely believe this is the best option for everyone. It’s not their fault they have the money to take advantage of it. Joph has money. Abdi’s family has money.”
“Joph would never take advantage of slave labor,” I said.
“She might if she didn’t know it existed,” Bethari said.
“She’d find out,” Tegan said angrily. “These people are just being stupid.”
“I don’t know,” I said. I was thinking back to the footage Joph had shown me in the garden, to the conversation I’d overhead between Pink Dress and her friends. My memory faithfully served up every word.
Those people hadn’t seemed stupid, and far from evil. Just lacking a lot of information and maybe a wider view. They were concerned with what touched them closest. For most people, you had to make something come home to make it real.
“We were on the inside, Tegan. To us it seems very clear. But the media machine they built around us was convincing. It had to be, to make them love us so much.”
Bethari nodded. “I knew you two, of all people, would never be in favor of indentured
labor. But even I was taken aback when you two first started being broadcast,” she said. “I wondered, just for a second, if we really had gotten it all wrong the first time.” She seemed to collapse a little, her scarf sagging. “And I’m just sick of death, whoever it is that’s dying. Aren’t you? I put together the EMP. I did something I knew was dangerous for what I thought was the greater good, and people died because of it. How is this different?”
There was a brief silence, where Hanad and his men looked carefully away, and Tegan’s grip on my hand grew warm. I couldn’t meet Bethari’s eyes.
“So if we tell the world, we could stop more rich people from choosing to die,” Tegan said.
“But we risk the government turning off cryocontainers for those refugees that could be revived,” I said. “And blaming us.”
“That’s only a theory,” Bethari said quickly.
“They’d do it,” I said. There was a weird buzzing in my ears, but I forced the words out: “It makes sense. It’s the practical thing to do.”
Bethari braced her hands on the table. “So we tell the world that as well! Warn them that if the power goes, it’s government murder, not us! Then the refugees will be protected.”
“They’d spin it,” I said. “They’d say that we said it to divert suspicion to the government, when we meant to use the EMP all along.”
“Is that practical, too?”
I dropped my head into my free hand. “Yes,” I said. My voice cracked on the word. “I have to think. There has to be some way to make this work out.”
Marie was folding and unfolding her hands. “Rich or poor, these are my patients. I have a responsibility. Bethari is right; we have to do something.”
“You can do whatever you like,” Hanad said, in a tone that indicated a final decision. “But Abdi comes with me. We have spent enough time on this firster foolishness.”
“No!” Tegan said. “You can’t just take him!”
Hanad frowned. Thulani’s left hand slipped out of sight, and Zaneisha’s shoulders shifted. I could feel the potential for sudden violence riding the air like a storm. Under the table, I gripped Tegan’s hand tighter, squeezing for silence.